I never went into this Advance Auto but it appeared to have been set up with the same fixtures and prototype seen in the Pep Boys conversions. Most of the Carquest stores have more of a independent dealer type of look, not as slick of an appearance.storewanderer wrote: ↑April 28th, 2024, 5:53 pmI thought the Reno Car Quest (Rock Blvd.) had Advance branding for a brief time period around 2018-2019 range, but either I imagined it or it never did.ClownLoach wrote: ↑April 28th, 2024, 10:16 am
Must have happened before I got here, and that would be before they got most of these Pep Boys units converted.
So I wonder how long this closed store actually had Advance branding.
I think the general lack of expansion effort in CA beyond the Pep Boys sites speaks volumes. It doesn't feel like they are taking the CA market seriously to me. They needed to expand further beyond the Pep Boys sites, quickly. There is plenty of available real estate and hundreds more 99 Only/Rite Aid/Walgreens vacancies coming/already available.
Pep Boys didn't have great locations in the first place. Many of the California stores were standalone or in subpar strip malls.
I cannot imagine that anyone can provide a superior experience for the customer or professional mechanic than either AutoZone or O'Reilly at this point. Their superior inventory management, logistics and order fulfillment capabilities are amongst the very best in all of retail. They have more than enough locations throughout California and vastly outnumber Advance. Furthermore, Advance seems to have completely stopped marketing here. For a short time they had some billboards and TV commercials that explicitly stated over 100 stores now open throughout California. But the only commercials I see now are national ones for Diehard batteries and no mention of the California introduction. Advance had national commercials for years but no stores here and I'm sure there are many people who had learned to just ignore the ads. But now that they are here I don't believe many customers are aware of it, nor do I see why they would be dissatisfied with O'Reilly or AutoZone and looking for another option.
AutoZone is approaching 700 stores in California, O'Reilly just a hair under 600. Advance has about 120. They're outnumbered 10 to 1. Probably time to cash out and sell off these sites to AutoZone or O'Reilly then get out of the state. There is no way they're going to get another 500+ locations opened with today's astronomically high commercial rents to become competitive, nor does the market need that many stores.